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Yale and Peru Have Tentative Deal on Disputed Antiquities

By Randy Kennedy November 23, 2010 8:40 amNovember 23, 2010 8:40 am

For the second time in three years Yale University and the government of Peru have reached a tentative agreement on the return of a large group of artifacts excavated in 1912 at Machu Picchu by a Yale explorer.

Peru has argued that the items were only lent to the university and should have been returned long ago. Yale has contended that it returned all borrowed objects in the 1920s, retaining only those to which it had full title. In 2007 the sides reached a tentative agreement that would have set up a long-term collaboration and granted title of the disputed antiquities to Peru while allowing a certain number to remain at Yale for study and display. But that deal fell apart in 2008, and Peru filed suit in federal court in Connecticut. It also recently threatened to pursue criminal charges against Yale. And earlier this month Alan García, the president of Peru, formally requested the White House’s intervention in the dispute.

Mr. García said that under the new agreement Yale would return all of the disputed objects, which would be housed at the University of San Antonio Abad in Cuzco, the city closest to Machu Picchu, where Yale scholars would collaborate on studies involving them. Yale issued a statement Sunday calling the agreement, which has not been formalized, “an expression of good will” and an acknowledgment of “the unique importance that Machu Picchu has come to play in the identity of the modern Peruvian nation.”